Weather Bombs

Interesting weather conditions just up on the north coast, We have been watching pictures on TV from there and the west coast of Scotland, mainly places we have visited recently like Largs and also the coast of Antrim Portrush etc.

The winds have been over 100 mph at times and waves of 50ft have ben recorded. We however have got away very lightly. Today the winds were only gusting to 28-30 mph but were strangely gusting around the compass swinging through 360 degrees. The majority of the time wind speeds were in the force 2-3 bracket.

The conditions up North have been caused by a slow moving and very deep low that has been deepened even further by a dip in the jet stream (bit like a child's toy, the whip and spinning top for those old enough to remember one) The now fashionable term for a depression that is deepened by some other phenomena is a `Weather Bomb` in the case of the famous Fastnet storm it was a secondary low. In this case it is dry air from the stratosphere deepening the low pressure by a process known as explosive cyclogenesis. All pretty scary stuff.

And another storm due tomorrow, fingers crossed.

Waves and waving at Port Stewart north coast of Antrim

Waves at Whitehaven Cumbria. I once asked Gregg Norris a Whitbread round the world sailor, where did you see the roughest seas Greg, Cape Horn, The Southern Ocean, cape of Good Hope?

he thought for a while then said “St Bees Cumbria”……… “Bloody awful place”

current affairs

for the last week or two there has been a furious exchange of e-mails between the Newry and Mourne district council and several boat owners berthed at the Albert Basin in Newry. Obviously this includes yours truly. The basic problem being that very few people on the council appear to know anything about boats. There is a generally held opinion that it isn't only boats that the council know very little about!

The power supply for yachts at the quays run from some rather elaborate cast iron boxes, quite Victorian and very functional in a rather old fashioned way however in another wholly inadequate as they only hold two connection points each. In consequence many connections up to now have been supplied by splitting the supply cables so at least two boats could share a supply. As there are only 5 boxes that means 10 power points. There are presently 23 yachts berthed at the Quays!

Enter the electrician, unfortunately the large training boat Soteria has been tripping the circuit breakers having a total of five leads coming out of one box. The electrician they sent down pointed out that this was 1/ probably unsafe 2/ exceeding the supply amp age 3/ illegal as it contravened regulations for supply to boats. The crew of Soteria reacted poorly and the electrician reported back to the council who correctly then informed us all that what we were doing was, …well see above.

The threat was that we would all be disconnected however in a flurry of cooperation and chaotic rushing around we managed to get the supplys back down to ten boats being supplied from ten power points, the council representatives agreed to consider adding additional powerpoints and we as berth holders agreed to disconnect one boat before connecting another so that only ten boats were connected at any one time.

Lynne and I were also photographed for the local paper the Newry Reporter.

First time as a page three girl for Lynne!

So all's well with the world again……….and we have got to know a lot more of our neighbours here at the Quays.